S-119-119
Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Sponsored by James Risch (R-ID)
What it does
This bill would require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to destroy all firearm transaction records it has collected from firearms dealers that have gone out of business, within 90 days of enactment. It would also amend federal law to stop the ATF from collecting such records from closed dealers in the future. The ATF director would be required to report to Congress on the number of records destroyed.
Who benefits
Gun owners whose past purchases were recorded in ATF's out-of-business dealer files, who would have those records eliminated. Current and future firearms buyers whose transactions at dealers that later close would no longer be retained by the federal government. Privacy advocates who oppose federal retention of firearms purchase data. Licensed firearms dealers who may prefer reduced federal recordkeeping of their historical transactions. Second Amendment advocacy organizations that have opposed what they characterize as a de facto federal gun registry.
Who is hurt
Federal law enforcement agencies — including the ATF, FBI, and local police — that use out-of-business dealer records to trace firearms used in crimes, potentially losing a key investigative tool. Victims of gun violence whose cases may go unsolved if a crime weapon cannot be traced. Prosecutors who rely on transaction records to establish chain of custody for firearms in criminal cases. Researchers and public health analysts who use firearms transaction data to study gun violence patterns.
Supporters argue
Supporters argue that the federal government has accumulated hundreds of millions of firearm transaction records — ATF reported holding over 920 million such records as of 2022 — creating what amounts to a de facto national gun registry that federal law explicitly prohibits. They contend that retaining records from dealers who are no longer in business serves no legitimate ongoing commercial purpose and that the Second Amendment's protections are undermined when the government maintains a comprehensive database of who owns which firearms, making destruction of these records a necessary safeguard against potential government overreach.
Opponents argue
Opponents argue that out-of-business dealer records are a critical law enforcement tool: ATF processes approximately 400,000 firearm trace requests annually, and a significant portion rely on records from closed dealers to link a crime gun to its first retail purchaser. They contend that destroying hundreds of millions of existing records would permanently eliminate evidence in unsolved crimes and cold cases, and that the privacy concern is overstated because these records are not publicly accessible and are used only for specific law enforcement traces — not general surveillance.
Constitutional context
The Second Amendment and the federal prohibition on a national gun registry (18 U.S.C. § 926(a)) are the primary legal backdrop. The bill does not directly raise Fourth Amendment issues, but Carpenter v. United States (2018) established that comprehensive government retention of personal records can implicate constitutional privacy interests, lending some constitutional weight to arguments about long-term federal data retention of firearms records.
Checks and balances
The executive branch (ATF/DOJ) would lose its current authority to retain and query out-of-business dealer records; Congress would impose a mandatory destruction requirement with a reporting obligation as the primary accountability mechanism.
Historical precedent
Congress has previously restricted ATF gun record retention through annual appropriations riders since 2004, prohibiting the creation of a searchable electronic database of dealer records — but no prior law has mandated the destruction of already-collected out-of-business records.